


Gurov was a friend of mine

by Cmdrchristof



Category: Anton Chekov, lady with the little dog
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:53:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23537161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cmdrchristof/pseuds/Cmdrchristof
Summary: A boy who can live in books and travel through their stories meets Dmitri Gurov and is taken under his wing to learn how to seduce women.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Gurov was a friend of mine

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a part of a collection of short stories that are set within different genres. I wanted to push the limits of my writing and to expand my range as a writer. What came out was this piece of Anton Chekov fan-fiction which is something that I never thought I would write!
> 
> WARNING  
> So I didn't know how to tag this in the AO3 warning system there is inferred sexual violence in this please be careful if this triggers you. I know I find such things hard to read, and to write but with such a misogynistic origin text I felt that this was warranted for.

I was fifteen when I first saw him, standing at the promenade, his thinning black hair dancing in the sea breeze. He didn’t notice me, he never did, not really anyway. There was something about his character, his demeanor that made me want to study him, to absorb his every particle to fully understand him in a way that no other man could. Dmitri Gurov was a friend of mine, I use the term friend lightly. He doesn’t know me, not as I am, but he had more impact on my life than any other living person. Which is ironic because he’s fictional.

There is a theory that writers create a metaphysical space when they write. I suppose you could say that I live in the cracks of those spaces, occasionally I’ll venture into one or another for a time but never for too long. The lady with the pet dog however kept me for many years. It seemed to me that Gurov was more than just the lecherous scoundrel that many people like to think him to be. He was more than that, and also much less.

I had recently come from a dickens, a dark place where no child was ever truly safe and the streets were both enemy and friend when I stumbled, almost literally into Gurov’s world. It was colder than I was expecting, and much darker for a story set in at the sea-side. But that didn’t put me off, not after I’d seen him standing there. I think I fell in love with him a bit then, it’s hard not to, he’s so wonderful and pitiful all at the same time. Then “she” came into view. If you could have seen his eyes as I did, seen the expression on his face you wouldn’t wonder how Anna fell in love with him. Behind that look of desire was a self-loathing that I recognized.

So I stayed, I was in the background of every scene he was in, I watched as he lost himself, found himself; lost Anna, found Anna, and fell into the despondency of Moscow. I tried to leave several times, I really did, but every time I’d think back to that first moment, and I’d stay. It was months before I dared to walk up to him.

I walked up to him at that promenade and I coughed gently to get his attention.  
“What are you wanting boy?” He asked, pointing those deep eyes at me.  
“Nothing.” I said becoming the coward that I had always known that I was.  
“Do not say nothing to me boy, you obviously wanted to say something to me so speak boy. I do not bite.”  
I think it was the phrase I do not bite, so close to the first thing Anna said to him that did it. I felt that I could trust him, at least for now.  
“I was wondering.” I said hesitating slightly as he raised an eyebrow at me  
“It is a good thing to be wondering, so often the youth do not do this.” He said giving me one of his rare smiles that he normally reserved for pretty women.  
“Could you help me?” I asked my heart beating the death march in my chest.  
“Help you? How could I help you being a visitor to this place?”  
“I have seen the way that you are with women, I want to learn how to be so.”  
If I had thought his previous smile had been beautiful I was overwhelmed by the new one that took over his face as he laughed the first honest laugh I had ever heard from him.  
“Boy you have some courage coming up to me like that. I like it. So you want to know about the lower race?” He said the smile leaving him the more he spoke.  
“No, I want to know about women, the ones who make you feel like you are a worm, the ones who make you feel like you are a god. Most of all I want to know how.”  
“How what?” He asked with a look of utter perplexity  
“I don’t know, if I knew I wouldn’t be asking you now would I.”  
So he took me under his wing, he instructed me and told me of the little tricks and techniques that he had used. How to get a woman who wants to be dominated (as he suggested that all women do), how to get a woman who is a virgin (this was something that he spoke of with some pride, but beneath it all I could see these were the ones he regretted), but most of all he taught me the shape of his love.  
I had been in love stories before, I once spent a season in Pride and prejudice. It was nice, sunny for the most part, the Bennett’s were wonderful hosts but the love that I saw there was not the kind of love that I wanted, so I said my goodbyes left and was erased from their story completely. The love that I saw in Gurov was akin to the one that I knew would someday beat in my chest, would consume me like chaff.  
I must have lived in the story for years, each time I would go back to the beginning and live it once more, over and over until I found myself a man. Gurov no longer answered me as a boy when I made my introductions, instead he viewed me with a mixture of suspicion and aloofness that I must admit cut me deep.  
I suppose it was inevitable that I would fall in love in that story, with him teaching me. I didn’t want to, I knew it was ill-fated, but after time I found myself truly, deeply, madly in love. I say madly and it was a kind of madness, isn’t all the good kinds of love? I had thought it would be with Anna, that I would learn from him and seduce her away from him, infuriating his lust and longing and never having him awaken to love. I had hoped it would be someone else. I had hoped I would not have to hurt my friend, that somehow we could all be together, he with Anna and myself with another bit player in a master’s work.  
But just like Gurov’s, my hopes were meaningless to the story that was set before us. It was he that I fell in love with, the strong charismatic man, the wounded puppy, the suave Casanova. He taught me everything he knew about seduction, and by doing so he taught me how to love him. He was not a beautiful man, he was barely handsome, but it was not about the physical attraction for that is fleeting, he taught me that, it was about the character of the person, if you’ll excuse my turn of phrase.  
At first I tried to deny my feelings, when we would talk about women and love, and drink together I would pretend that when I moved closer to him it was so that I could hear better, not because I wanted to smell the deep musk of him. That when I lay my hand on his arm, it was not because I wanted to embrace his body with mine, but instead because I wanted to support his argument. That when I leant in to whisper in his ear that a tingle of electricity did not pass through my body and like a magnet my lips were drawn to his.  
It was inevitable, that I would slip, I could not break free of him no matter how much I tried. He was the sun around which my heart orbited. I think if I had been able to leave then perhaps I would have been able to spare myself. I am not a strong man, not when it comes to matters of the heart it would appear, and so I kissed him.  
We were having drinks in his hotel room he was regaling me with tales of his conquests and I felt myself lean in. I watched in horror as I pressed my lips against his. My heart stopped beating for what felt like an eternity until he pulled back from me as if I was a viper that had bitten him. The look in his eyes, hatred and loathing that I had never seen before. I ran faster than I had run on the streets of London, faster than I knew I was capable of. I dove into the cold sea and immersed myself in frigid penance for my transgression.  
I emerged some thirty minutes my clothes clinging to me bearing my shame for the world to see. Though I knew that I should not, I found myself still aroused from the mere memory of his lips against mine. I walked back to the hotel and locked myself in my room refusing to come out even after Gurov knocked and asked to speak to me.  
The next morning I dressed in the best clothes that I had managed to get, and walked like a man going to be hung to breakfast. Gurov was there he was buttering some bread when I walked in and pointed at me with the knife saying  
“You and I we need to speak.”  
I tried to swallow the large lump that was in my throat, and tried failingly not to remember the feel of his lips, the smell of his breath.  
He directed me to sit next to him.  
“what you did last night was not a good thing.” Gurov said looking me straight in the eyes.  
“I know.” I responded meekly  
“You should be with women, overpowering them with your charm, instead you kiss me. This cannot happen if it does again we shall never speak nor see each other, you will be dead to me. We will never speak of this again. Do you understand?” Gurov said articulating every word of his question with his knife.  
I nodded ashamed at myself, hurt at his words, but also strangely angry. He had made it clear that I could never have him, but perhaps I might be able to make him feel something towards me if I was the threat that he believed me to be.  
I must seduce Anna I thought as I ate my breakfast.  
I don’t know why I did what I did, I was hurting and I felt as though my entire world had come crashing down around me. I knew deep inside that seducing Anna would gain me nothing, but perhaps I might cure myself of my love with lust and vengeance upon him for making me fall in love with him.  
I stepped back to the beginning, I walked to the first place Gurov met Anna and I waited. Sure enough she walked by and I walked up to her but angled as if I were going to pass by. I feigned noticing the dog and beckoned the dog over. I used the trick that Gurov did and waggled my finger. The dog growled at me and like clockwork Anna said  
“He doesn’t bite.” There was no blush at this for me, not like with Gurov, but I played out the scene as it had been thousands of times before with him.  
“May I give him a bone?” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the bone I had secured for this purpose. “Have you been long in Yalta?” I said giving her the smile he had taught me.  
“Five days.” She said finally blushing.  
I played out the rest of the scene, giving her what should have been Gurov’s to give.

The next time we met I asked her to take a walk with me. She agreed hesitantly, as if she somehow knew something was wrong. We walked along the promenade and we went to her hotel where I bid her good day.  
I had a plan not only would I seduce her but I would do it quicker than him.  
The very next day I met her outside of her hotel, she was nervous like a schoolgirl and for that brief second I doubted myself. She was beautiful in her own way, especially when I viewed her through the eyes of Gurov, but was it right for me to use her so?  
Then I remembered everything that Gurov had taught me and I knew that if he could do this I would do this.  
I seduced her with words that were a mix of my own and his. I played into her fears, her worries and by nightfall she was mine for the plucking.  
I took her to her hotel room, locking the door behind us, and I slowly began to undress her. She flinched sometimes at my hand, and I felt a wetness on my cheek that I ignored. I undressed with both in the physical and mentally. She stood before me as naked as she was on the page.  
I was not aroused in the least; I let her undress me my flaccid failure shaming me. And then I thought of him, I remembered the kiss, I remembered his words, the hurt, the desire. I pushed her down, I kissed her firm and hard, and I poured out my lust and hurt upon her for hours.  
She sat on the bed afterwards her knees drawn in and her arms around them. She knew she had done something wrong. My heart was shattered, but I would not let her go. If I could not have him at least I would have someone, I might even grow to love her.  
I grew aroused again thinking about what I was taking and so I took her again, and again that night leaving her empty and void as I walked out of her hotel room.  
Things began to change after that. As dark as Yalta in the story had been it grew darker. Anna was no longer where she was supposed to be and it took me some over two weeks to find her again. She was with him.  
I walked up to her and she flinched away from me into his arms.  
“You have done a bad thing again.” Gurov said “I do not know why but you have done this thing to her.”  
“I did nothing to her that you would not have.” I said”.  
I grabbed her arm and pulled her to me. “You are mine Anna, you know this.  
“Boy you should not do such a thing, you know better. Gurov grabbed her other arm and yanked her from me. They began to run with Gurov still holding tight onto her arm.  
I ran after them, calling out that he could not take her from me. That I would not let him take her.  
I chased them to the cliffs.  
Gurov saw me coming still, and looked at Anna.  
“Lady, be free with me.” He said as he moved for the edge of the cliff. She followed her eyes hollow and despaired.  
I could have stopped them, I should have, I could have even gone back to the beginning but instead I watched as they threw themselves off the cliff.  
I looked down at their bodies, they were holding hands at the end. I felt the hot rush of tears on my face as what I had done became clear. I had changed the story, I had made him do this.  
With a quick run and a shift through a crack I threw myself into Dante’s Inferno.


End file.
